8vo. Original cream cloth (spine a bit toned); dust jacket (spine gently faded).

FIRST ENGLISH EDITION, of the author’s Pulitzer Prize-winning posthumous novel with a limited run of 1500 copies, which is 1000 copies fewer than the U.S. edition published in 1980.

“This novel has a sad history behind it. The author sent it to every publisher in America, all of whom rejected it. After the final rejection (by Knopf) Toole committed suicide. He was only thirty–two. His mother gave the manuscript to Walker Percy, who secured its publication by Louisiana State University Press, and it was awarded a posthumous Pulitzer Prize. Its virtues have now been universally recognized… New Orleans can be the same again after Toole’s comic masterpiece” (Burgess, 99 Novels 125).